Body Swappers 30
The final confrontation.
Intro/outro sound is Prime Light Harp Melody 165 BPM.mp3 by snikpohneb — https://freesound.org/s/173463/ — License: Attribution 3.0
By the time Maya opened her eyes, Robert had stopped touching her foot. Only an impression of his hand remained.
“Well?” Robert asked.
“I at least exorcised myself,” she said, “so hopefully I did her, too. I don’t know. I’ve never inhabited a body alongside someone else who wasn’t the body’s owner. Who knows how it really works?”
She took a deep breath, of her own volition. That’s nice.
She picked up the used bandage and walked it outside the grid, breaking its connection. “What does the timer say?”
He stood and checked it. “Twelve minutes.”
“That’s not a lot of time to figure out what to do next.”
“We can call Mason. Tell him Camille drew the blood of all those people who ended up committing murders.”
“Yeah,” Maya said. She set the bandage down and started picking up the gems that made the grid. Robert put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.
“I’m really sorry it was your friend. That must be really hard.”
Maya clenched her jaw. “There’s no time for that!”
Robert removed his hand.
Keeping herself from snapping again, Maya asked, “Would you do it? Call Mason? You’re the one who talked to LabCorp, and Deaconess.”
“Yeah,” he said, and went to the door. He stopped, and said, “Maybe once you’re done collecting the gems, you could look around for the blood? You’re her friend, so if they take forensics it makes sense they’d find your hair and fingerprints. Most places, at least.”
“I’ll do that.”
He left, and Maya was alone with the sensory depravation tank. The tank with her friend’s body inside. But was Camille there? She’d been exorcised once before. Had she installed precautions, like Maya had?
Deciding there was no way to know, Maya turned her back on the tank. She went and grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom, then came back into the second bedroom. If I were a crazy serial killer looking to hide a store of blood…
She draped the towel over her hand, then opened the closet door. Someone had installed an outlet in the closet, to power the minifridge that was there, humming away. Maya used the towel to open it. There were about a dozen vials of blood, with little labels with patients’ names and dates of birth on them.
Lovely, she thought, and shut the door. For a time, her brain refused to form thoughts. Then, How do I make sure they see this?
She used the towel to unplug the fridge, then to grab the bottom back edge of it. She lifted it out against her chest, walked over to an outlet in clear sight of the bedroom door, and plugged it back in. Because of all the side tables, it wasn’t really visible from the tank itself.
Maya texted Robert, I found the blood. Make sure they come back to this room.
She looked at the timer. Five minutes left. She had to make sure Camille didn’t leave the room, otherwise there was no reason for the police to come back here. She’d have to stall better, this time. What to say once they arrived? How would she explain everything?
The gears of her mind ground against one another, not lined up well enough to think it through. Four minutes. Three. She closed her eyes so the clock wouldn’t distract her. That’s when she remembered she was holding a hand towel. That would look odd. She rushed to the bathroom, hung the towel back up, went back, realized a closed minifridge wasn’t suspicious, growled, and opened it.
A minute left. What am I going to say to Camille? Perhaps she would be zonked, post-exorcism. Or maybe not. It depended on if Camille found another source of information to help her cope—she hadn’t asked Maya.
With thirty seconds remaining, Maya realized half of the gems in her pocket didn’t belong to her. She dashed to the living room, laid Camille’s gems on the table, and got back to the second bedroom just in time to see the sensory depravation tank’s door open. Camille, drenched and wearing only a swimsuit, stepped onto the bath mat in front of it.
They stared at one another, Maya breathing hard, Camille not. Camille took a step toward the door, saying, “Well,” but Maya stepped closer to her, using her greater physical presence to cause Camille to flinch back. She felt sick doing it.
Better roll with it, now.
“Can you explain to me,” Maya said, “what part of ‘No, don’t kill my dad,’ you don’t understand?”
The world of thoughts was different than the world of bodies. Maya was at least half a foot taller than Camille, and had trained for years in self defense. This isn’t self defense, she thought, looming over Camille, feeling like an absolute brute.
But after a moment’s surprise, Camille’s face twisted. “I thought you would get it, if you knew. I can’t believe I was so wrong about you.”
“You can’t believe you were wrong about me? It seems now that you were only my friend to figure out how to do this.”
Camille’s aura flashed white and blue. She was genuinely shocked and hurt by the suggestion. But she only snarled harder.
Maya began to hear sirens, from a distance. When Camille heard them, too, her aura flared red, then threaded with yellow.
“What, you think they’ll lock me up for this?” Camille asked, her lips turning up into a rictus of a grin.
“They passed the initiative.”
“In this case, it’s me who will benefit from the court’s complete failure. No one’s going to lock up a cute little woman like me on a new law about magic.”
“Well, they might on conspiracy to commit murder. Since it’s provable you met each of the men who were convicted of the previously unconnected murders.”
The sirens grew louder, closer. Camille frowned, and her aura settled into a dull blue.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they’ll let me off with little more than a slap on the wrist. That’s what they did for all those ‘victims’ I rid the world of.” She flinched, as if in pain, then spat.
Maya looked down. There was a dark liquid on her black slacks. It was barely visible, but she knew what it was. Camille’s blood.
Camille asked, her voice wet, “Would you be so honorable, so pompous, when given the same choice?” She swallowed.
Maya didn’t know what to say. But then, there were police charging in the house, and she didn’t have the opportunity, anyway.